Claire Weetman has created the artwork, ‘What are you waiting for?’ which will be staged in St Helens to coincide with World Mental Health Day on 10th October 2018. For this she needs up to 10 people to wear the specially made belts with a tensabarrier attached. As part of this role you will be asked to wear the belts in a public space and to move through that space in a choreographed way.

The performance will be filmed and the subsequent footage will be exhibited as an artwork by Claire Weetman.

Requirements:

There will be a 1 hour briefing/rehearsal session on the morning of Tuesday 18th September, which will be paid at £10 for the hour.

4 people are required for an event at Thatto Heath Library 1:30-4:30pm on Tuesday 18th September. This will be paid at £30 for the 3 hours.

10 people are required for the event at Thatto Heath Library 1:00-5:00pm on Wednesday 10th October. This will be paid at £40 for the 4 hours.

By taking up the role you agree to be paid as a self employed person, responsible for your tax and national insurance responsibilities. If you cannot guarantee this, but would still like to be part of the performance, travel and reasonable subsistence expenses can be reimbursed on receipt of evidence of expenditure.

How to get involved

To express your interest in being part of this event, contact Claire Weetman by email

I’ve been doing this for a while now – being an artist. June 2018 marks 15 years since I graduated from University with a Fine Art Degree and started along the path of self-employment, art making and enabling other people to make art. There’s key points along that path that have pushed my practice in particular directions and one of those was an invitation to exhibit in Stuttgart in 2008 as part the 60th anniversary celebrations of the twinning programme between that city and my resident St Helens.It was in essence a small event, an invitation to send artworks to the sister city and to travel to the opening event where I created a performed drawing, however it showed me the possibilities that being in a new place has for my practice. Experiencing new places, working out how to use my tools and practices in response. New drawings, installations, processes and ideas emerge and adapt, ready to be shown, shared and tested in other locations. The 3 days in Stuttgart in 2008 may have been short, but they had long implications for my practice (and my drinks cupboard, I still have the wine festival glass I brought back).Since then I have been fortunate to work in Linz, Istanbul, Shanghai and Southend as an artist in residence, often in short sharp bursts – a week in the spring, a fortnight in the summer, a week in the snow, four weeks in the rain – they’re not your typically advertised artist in residence period. Those are often 3 months in one place – who can commit to these timescales? A small number of artists, yes, but those with partners, ongoing work commitments that sustain a practice over the long term, children, parents in need of care, for many it can be a struggle to engage with this process.But sometimes it happens differently. So, to celebrate the fabulous flexibility of Yellow Door Artists who invited me to return to Stuttgart in spring 2018 (wow, it’s really 10 years since I was there) and their partners St Helens Council and GEDOK artists studios I’d like to share with you how precious even a 5-day ‘residency’ can be.…Day 1:17:45pm arrive at GEDOK studio house. Introductions, bumping into an old friend, eating hurriedly prepared cous-cous, going to a forum to meet artists, to understand some of their practices. Translation, listening for german phrases I remember, zoning in and out as the conversations develop. Stomach-turning biscuits embossed with images reminiscent of Hieronymous Bosch, faces in paintings, questions about installing works. Sharing my work, recruiting 6 artists to make a performance with me, choosing a location and a time less than 48 hours from now. Settling into the studio flat, sleeping at UK bedtime.

Day 2:Waking early to the sound of church bells, buying breakfast (and beer for later), talking to my family at home, heading out early to explore locations. The Jewish Cemetery, Universität, Hauptbahnhof, Milaneo. Making a pilgrimage to C&A to relive my teenage fashion aspirations. Exploring the beautiful Bibliothek, considering its potential as an exhibition and intervention space. Holding onto original prints by Eduardo Chilida in the graphothek, wondering if we could have the same in St Helens, or if artists from St Helens could feature here. Reflecting on the similarities of the bibliothek space to the purpose of the cloisters at Norton Priory – deciding to include this location in a series of embossings I’ll produce here for an exhibition back home. Sitting out in the square outside the library on a deckchair in the sunshine. Warming my damp winter-weary bones in the spring warmth whilst watching how people move through the space. Areas of transit, areas of relaxation, areas for socialising, waiting spaces, places to promenade. Considering the role of the performer in my work, how to choreograph it, what is the script. Deciding to walk back to the studio, discovering the Chinese Garden, zig zag paths to confuse the spirits. A quick freshen up and then out to an artist-led space. Meeting more artists, sharing ideas about waiting, understanding the context of refugees in Germany, thinking about what an artist does differently in situations. Exploring the city, lakes, stationery shops, the crest of St Helens cast into the floor, the old castle, its cloistered passageway, thinking about how this could link to my work in progress for Norton Priory. Walking back home, meeting the other visiting artist in residence, taking a walk up the hill. Getting lost, finding our way, talking about studying, families, reaching the tower at the top. Back home to eat late, share food and drink that beer.

Day 3Staying in the studio, saying good morning to my family, then time alone. Thinking about choreography, how to communicate my ideas to the performers with little time and no rehearsal. Getting excited about graph-squared tracing paper, making an analogue stop-motion animation. Heading out to find out what the general strike today is about – looking for the gathering. Waiting for the demonstration. A truck is bounded by four people carrying warning tape, marking out space, moving through space, don’t enter this space. Whistles, banners, translating their demands through photo-translate, being part of an event whilst also being an outsider. Back home, making a flyer to give to the performers, translating it, transcribing it, copying, pasting. Packing the work into a rucksack, taking a selfie before I leave, hoping I don’t get anyone arrested, walking back to the square with plenty of time to spare. Waiting, for my performers, working out where to start, a photographer arrives to document it. We intervene, we move, we wait. Shifting, obstructing, channelling, kettling, connecting, disconnecting, zig-zagging, disbanding. Watermelon Ice cream and gifts of thanks. Then, to a symposium, a lecture, hard to follow, not enough time to cover everything. We walk, find falafel and eat together. Find the crests of St Helens and Brno cast into the pavement and explore our connections to Stuttgart. Then home.

Day 4The main aim while being here – the performance – is ticked off. Change of focus. Scribing spaces into parchment paper. Aerial views of a cloister, library, university, auditorium. Spaces of learning, writing, solitude, community and focus. The cloister is the encapsulation of an artist’s residency. The rain pours outside the window and I head to an invitation for lunch. Taking a new route, buying strawberries which makes me late. Welcomed into the studio by home made aromas. Sharing over food, finding the commonality between practices. Time, place, layering, ephemerality. Finding ways to connect in future. Off again to visit an exhibition venue, how can I exhibit work here? But look, the plaza is embossed with a grid – how can I work with this space? I watch, I film, I count how big the space is by how many steps people take. 1,2,3,4,5,6, nearly 7. Now him; 1,2,3,4,5,6, and a bit. How about her? 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. How can I use this space, as a maze, will my intervention from yesterday work here on a massive scale – think I might need to write a proposal. Choral music emanates from an auditorium, I explore and remember that we were in that room 10 years ago – speeches at the exhibition opening, an unexpected custom. Disappointment that the paternoster lifts are not working, I head down the stairs. Hot chocolate and a fig tart. Time to think, then let’s squeeze in a lecture before my next meet up. Time, time travel, how do we communicate an idea from the future back to the past, how can the future us save ourselves? Across the city to a theatre, ready to meet Labyrinth theatre company as they rehearse for a show tomorrow. Shoes! Shoes! Who wants shoes that will transform your life? Young men, with stories to tell. Stories of struggle, of hiding, of the ice man who is always lurking in the shadows. Watching how they work together, how the team supports them, how the director pushes them to strive for the best performance they can all give by working together. It is late, but I don’t need to go home to anyone, so back to the symposium for a film. Some context about Kurdistan, Syria. Confinement, wanting to help. Different ways of helping that get conflicted and corrupted, everyone wants the best for their families. Nearly midnight, I slope off from the post-film Q&A and walk through the night.Day 5The last morning to be woken by the bells. Becoming fond of the whistling kettle. Packing, breakfast in the sunshine with friends new and old before an excursion to the flohmarkt. Remembering buying a bicycle from the flohmarkt on a residency in Linz and falling off in the tram tracks, looking for a darning mushroom to use as a printing baren, deciding to just buy ice cream shaped buttons. Saying goodbye and heading back to the studio. One last ice cream in the sunshine as an end of residency treat. Artwork on stickers, Yellow Door taught me about slap ups last year, and #freeartfriday. It’s a day late, but I’ll do it anyway. Marking my route back home. Helped up or held down? Time to leave. But I’ve still got this time alone whilst I travel. Still working in the airport, and on the plane, sharing the creativity with the father and son next to me. Good luck with your exhibition. Home again and the intensity breaks.….5 weeks laterI write this piece, having gone to a library I wouldn’t normally go to. Taking the lessons from the solitude of a residency to give me space to think and to plan. Wondering how all of these experiences, connections and ideas will unravel into my future practice, into new works to realise, whether at home, back in Stuttgart or in another location in the future. The residencies I participate in may be short and sharp, but they extend far into the future of my work.

This year I’ve been making a lot (for me) of print work, exploring monoprinting and adding in a little bit of screenprint for variety. I’ve participated in the Hot Bed Press 20:20 print exchange, which saw a flurry of print activity and furrowed brows at Platform studios in St Helens as 9 other artists joined together to create a series of 25 prints at 20cm square.

To celebrate this joint enterprise, we’re having a festive celebration at Platform studios on Saturday 9th December from 1-4pm. You’ll be able to view the works produced for the exchange, see the works we’ve received from other printmakers across the UK, eat cake that has been baked to fit the 20x20cm guidelines and enjoy a warming hot chocolate.

I’ll have a selection of prints for sale, some are especially festive and others are things I’ve worked on during this year. There will be prices from £2 to £10, and all of the proceeds from these sales will be ploughed into producing a new programme of work planned for 2018 that works directly with people who have been displaced from their home countries. Available prints and prices are in the gallery below, if you see something you like but can’t make it on the 9th, then get in touch and I can post it out to you for the price of a first class stamp (an extra 75p).

Held down/Helped up, Trial proof, 20x20cm £10

The holly bears the crown, Gold screenprint on monotype, edition of 3, £5

I’m really pleased to share that I’ll be exhibiting at the Bluecoat this spring as part of their ‘Public View’ exhibition, celebrating the Bluecoat’s 300th anniversary. The list of artists exhibiting is really amazing and I’m humbled to have been invited to exhibit as part of this show as an artist who has exhibited there in the past. The exhibition will feature works that have been shown throughout the Bluecoat’s history, some that were made at the same time as the artist exhibited there, or as a completely new artwork.

My history with the Bluecoat stretches back to around 2003 when I volunteered in the gallery whilst at University, then exhibited my degree show work ‘Sit and Draw’ in the old windowbox space in 2004. The Bluecoat have been brilliant at supporting artists as they develop their practice and invited me to exhibit in 2008 as part of Next Up and to create ‘Passing, Watching, Waiting, Following’ in the College Street space. Sara-Jayne Parsons invited POST Liverpool to exhibit as part of Global Studio and supported me to create ‘Two installations’ in the Vide in 2013 following my residency in Shanghai.

It is work from that latter exhibition that I will be representing in Public View, showing one of my pinned collages that acted as a study for the interactive projection work that featured in the Vide. I’m really thankful of Sara-Jayne Parsons and Bryan Biggs support over the past 13 years, and am really happy to join in the celebrations of a brilliant Liverpool institution.

The first new work I’ve exhibited in a while is now on show at the latest Markmakers exhibition at The Brindley in Runcorn. A maquette for a maze of displacementis a video installation work that forms a study for a proposed mass participation public intervention.

Landmarks & Boundaries is the latest project from Markmakers; Halton’s contemporary art collective, and is inspired by the artists’ geographical location of living near to the coastlines of North West England and Wales, and their individual experiences, knowledge of tides, islands, pathways, histories, folklore and rites of passage.

Crossings at high tide, clothes as signifiers of personal boundaries, migration and the experience of moving through the physical landscape are among the subjects explored with media ranging widely from paint and print to sculpture, textiles and installation.

Expect the unexpected and join the artists for their gallery talk and reception on Saturday 17 September in the Brindley Gallery at 1pm, all welcome, refreshments will be served.

Seven artists, six residencies, one group show.Claire Weetman, Ian Jackson, Alice Bradshaw, Rebecca Long & Cameron Muir, Leah Hislop, Tom McGinn5 Dec 2014 – 25 Jan 2015Opening night 5 December 7pmJoin me on the opening of Residual Projects to see the beginning of my mini residency as part of this new exhibition or come and visit on Saturday 6th & Sunday 7th December 12-3pm.

Residual Projects is the culmination of an annual traineeship programme between South Square Gallery and The Hepworth Wakefield, which sees Curator Charlie Booth make her debut. Charlie explains;

‘Residual Projects is a critical look at traditional artists residencies, where work will be created and installed whilst the gallery is open. The result will be a group exhibition which grows week by week as different artists enter and leave the space. This is an interactive project, where visitors are invited to engage with the work being created so as to better understand the processes used and decisions made.’

Residual Projects is a series of miniature residencies with seven nationwide artists using the gallery to explore their own artistic interests whilst the gallery is open to the public. The work they create during their residency will be left for the next artist to negotiate. The aim is to create a dynamic group exhibition which explores how artists can work collaboratively.All participating artists will be creating new work which responds directly to the physical architectural or social history of South Square Gallery and the history of Thornton.

Throughout the evening of the 5th December I will create an instinctive performance piece inspired by South Square’s domestic history as a collection of Stonemason cottages. My intervention will involve the audience on the night; dividing lines will intersect the galleries floors and walls, marking out different possibilities of living arrangements within the confined space. This new work is a continuation of the socio-political piece Residential Mosaics shown at the Brindley earlier this year and ‘a remarkable architecture of stairs‘ which looked at the proliferation of high rise flats of Shanghai.

During October I’ve been working with St Augustine of Canterbury Catholic High School on some varied drawing activities. The bulk of the time was spent with Year 7 on a project using footprints, although I also got to spend some time with pupils from Years 9, 10 & 11 on a range of drawing activities too.

Over the course of a day I worked with each Year 7 pupil using frottage to capture an image of their footprint, before they layered tracing paper over the top to create a black and white graphic design. These drawings have then been transformed into digital files suitable for cutting with the school’s laser cutter – a piece of kit that more and more high school technology departments have in their arsenal.

Their very helpful technology teacher then cut the files that I laid out into mylar stencils and rubber stamps for an after school session where Year 7 pupils returned with their parents for an evening of jet washing and animation.

The stencil designs are inspired by the transitional journey that Year 7 pupils have taken from primary to high school and feature footprints, maps, school names and words to describe the emotions of moving to this new community.

The footprints were also turned into rubber stamps, which were used to create a quick stop motion animation by building up the prints a few at a time, the results of which are here:

You’ve only got until this Saturday 9th August to catch my exhibition at the Brindley. If you missed the artist’s talk on Saturday 26th July, then here’s a bit of footage of me talking about the Residential mosaic works: